Operators are being pursued as both customers and partners by the major cloud providers for edge-based services under the AI/ML banner, targeting a variety of applications involving automated network optimization, configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting. Larger tier 1 operators are more likely to feature as partners while lower tier operators will tend to be customers gaining from the scale economics of the cloud providers in terms of analytical expertise as well as infrastructure. The big six in this area consist of the three US hyperscalers – Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud – plus the enterprise-centric Oracle Cloud and IBM Cloud, with some international presence for China’s Alibaba Cloud. They have all been hyperactive in this area, with Alibaba being…